What You’ve Missed

When Opportunity Knocks

A few of Lorenzo’s friends from college still live here in Atlanta. They all have the same degree (something fancy with computers, art, design, and programming) and only a few of them are actually working in their field today. When a few positions opened up in Albuquerque where Lorenzo used to work, he told 2 of his friends about it. One was working in retail and the other at a tattoo shop. They would have had to move to New Mexico, obviously, and Lorenzo offered to help with the transition since they haven’t been practicing in the field for a while. They both declined.

One of the major things that I’ve learned about life from Lorenzo is that he is a huge advocate of following the money. He was never a person to waste an opportunity to advance his career even if it meant that he had to pack up his bags and move more than halfway across the country (which he’s done, twice).

Just this year he made another major career move by leaving a (huge) well known organization for a smaller one that gave him more leadership responsibilities and better pay. I was opposed to this idea but I trusted his decision. He doesn’t make these types of decisions all willy nilly. There is a list- pros, cons, consequences, action plan, and contingency plan. His ability to make these types decisions and his follow through are some of things that attracted me to him early on in our relationship. I’m not even going to get into all the people I knew who had no plan. They were content where they were with no defined goals and or plans for the future. A man with a plan is hot. 😉

I guess I said all that to say this: my old employer called me and asked me if I wanted to come back and work for the company. At first I thought they were kidding, but when I spoke to the HR rep and negotiated a salary I knew they were serious. The benefits for me is that I will get to work from home, I’ll have the same schedule as Lorenzo, I’ll have more time to focus on school and my certifications, and I’ll be making more money. An opportunity presented itself and now I that I’m in a slightly better position, I can make time to put all my other plans into place.

I don’t believe that opportunity only knocks once. I think people are presented with multiple opportunities throughout their lives, it’s just a matter of choosing to take advantage or not. There could be a multitude of things that could stop people from taking advantage of something, fear is usually at the top of that list. In the case of Lorenzo’s friends, they didn’t want to leave Atlanta, even though they would have been a part of an excellent company, working in their field, making more money, and ultimately could have transferred back to Atlanta after a year or so.